BETTINA PRATOworkin partnership with Palestinians. In this kind of work the group finds practical ways
to transcend normative categorizations inherited from ethno-national trauma discourses
without feeling the need to find alternative narratives of identity as a precondition for
practices having economic and symbolic power.
A key aspect of this choice to focus on testimonial, productive, and restorative soli-
darity work is a ‘‘traumatic’’ reading of the Covenant and of God’s presence in history,
neither of which seems to yield a blueprint for premessianic Jewish politics. In other
words, this choice acknowledges the absence of a Fatherlike Symbolic principle (e.g., a
God who speaks clearly about how to reconcile ethics, sovereignty, and survival). This
may allow a representational and life-enabling order alternative to that centered on state-
hood, ascriptive citizenship, and borders. RHR members repeatedly affirm their awareness
of the Arendtian warning that justice (both that which comes from the recognizing dis-
tinct national narratives and that which allows a family to have a roof over its head)
depends in part on the ontological consolidation of potentially exclusionary subjectivities
into rights of sovereignty, borders, and citizenship. Instead of advocating a Levinasian
ethics of responsibility shorn of context, RHR’s work thus builds on the unequal power
effects of a specific political and economic context that includes Israeli statehood, the
fragmentation of Israeli and particularly of Palestinian economies under the Occupation,
and unequal citizenship rights. RHR uses these inequalities to achieve concrete results
through solidarity work, but also seeks opportunities for contrapuntal interruptions of
the exclusionary aspects of Jewish-Israeli nationhood. Again, this occurs not at the level
of narratives that provide symbolic signification for certain events or forms of violence
but rather through a multiplicity of testimonial, restorative, or preventative initiatives to
which the group invites Israelis, through a network of volunteers and via e-mail appeals.
As I mentioned at the outset, RHR is essentially a group of activists, although only a
minority of its roughly ninety members (2004 figure) are directly involved in daily activi-
ties such as farming, tree planting, house (re)building, demonstrations, lobbying with
government agencies, and so forth. Much of this work is done by volunteers, some of
them students in its yeshiva program, as well as any other person who has time and
energy to contribute. For some initiatives, individuals who can take on the burden of
heavy labor or bear the risk of violence are especially encouraged to participate, while in
other cases entire families are invited, for instance, when Palestinian farmers celebrate the
harvest or the successful (though often temporary) reconstruction of their homes. RHR
may engage with Palestinian farmers (and often with members of the International Soli-
darity Movement) in plowing, pruning, harvesting, helping to sell Palestinian agricultural
produce (particularly olives and oil), and planting trees uprooted by soldiers or by settlers.
Moreover, the group collects information on families who have received demolition or-
ders for homes built without permit on their own land in East Jerusalem or in neighboring
areas. When a legal case to defend these families cannot be made successfully, RHR volun-
teers often participate in initiatives to resist demolitions by standing in the way of bulldoz-
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